Israel TV Star Lapid Defies Critics With Election Surge

Israel’s Yair Lapid said in his post-election speech, “I call on the leaders of the political echelon to work with me as much as possible to form as wide a coalition as possible.” Photographer: Ilia Yefimovich/Getty Images

Jan. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Israel’s Yair Lapid, a former
television interviewer dubbed by the Haaretz daily the “prom
king politician,” answered his critics yesterday by scoring a
surprise second-place outcome in national elections.

The success of Lapid’s Yesh Atid party means that Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “will now probably put together a
more centrist government, with Lapid as his main partner,” said
Jonathan Spyer, a political scientist at the Interdisciplinary
Center Herzliya in Israel.

While Lapid, 49, supports a two-state solution to resolve
the conflict with the Palestinians, his campaign largely
refrained from criticizing Netanyahu on diplomatic affairs.
Instead, he focused on domestic issues he said were important to
Israel’s middle class, including lowering housing costs, cutting
government bureaucracy and eliminating draft deferments for
ultra-religious Jews.

Yesh Atid, Hebrew for “there is a future,” won 18
parliament seats according to Channel Two’s exit poll, higher
than any survey predicted and second only to Netanyahu’s Likud-Beitenu. The prime minister’s party won 33, according to the
poll, and will need other parties to build a majority coalition
in Israel’s 120-seat parliament, the Knesset.

“We have the opportunity to do very big things for the
State of Israel,” Netanyahu told Lapid after the vote,
according to comments posted on the prime minister’s Facebook
page.

Model, Journalist

Lapid has worked as a model, actor, journalist and, for the
past decade, a television interviewer and the host of a highly
rated current affairs program. Haaretz called him a “former
teenage heart-throb with daddy issues” and “the ultimate
personification of a political sphere obsessed with stardom.”

His candidacy represents “a lack of ideological compass, a
blurring of ethical boundaries and populism as a worldview,”
said Zehava Gal-On, leader of the leftist Meretz faction.

Lapid has said he entered politics in part to carry on the
legacy of his late father. Tommy Lapid, who died in 2008, was
also a journalist and broadcaster, whose now-defunct Shinui
party won 15 seats in the 2003 election. Before imploding amid
internal conflicts, Shinui supported the government of Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon in reducing child allowances for large
ultra-Orthodox families, and in evacuating of Jewish settlements
from the Gaza Strip.

Lapid founded Yesh Atid last year to fill the centrist gap
left by Shinui’s absence, with a parliamentary list that, except
for Herzliya Mayor Yael German and Dimona Mayor Meir Cohen, is
drawn largely from outside the political sphere. Candidates
include Jacob Perry, former head of the Israeli security
service, Shin Bet, and ex-chief executive officer of Cellcom
Israel Ltd.; Mickey Levy, a former Jerusalem police chief; and
journalist Ofer Shelah.

“I call on the leaders of the political echelon to work
with me as much as possible to form as wide a coalition as
possible,” Lapid said in his post-election speech, “so that
will unite the moderate forces from the right and the left.”